Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī was a 13th-century Muslim-Andalucían scholar who wrote "one of only two cookbooks to survive" from that era. Al-Tujībī was born in 1227 to a wealthy family of scholars living in

Murcia Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the seventh largest city in the country. It has a population of 460,349 inhabitants in 2021 (about one ...

. The Christian reconquest of Spain led many Muslim families to flee including Al-Tujībī's. In 1247 the family ended up in

Béjaïa Béjaïa (; ; ar, بجاية‎, Latn, ar, Bijāya, ; kab, Bgayet, Vgayet), formerly Bougie and Bugia, is a Mediterranean port city and commune on the Gulf of Béjaïa in Algeria; it is the capital of Béjaïa Province, Kabylia. Béjaïa is ...

(now Algeria). By 1259 Al-Tujībī had relocated to

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

. While Al-Tujībī wrote many books, only his cookbook, ''Fiḍālat al-Khiwān fī Ṭayyibāt al-Ṭaʿām wa-l-Alwān'' (English: ''Best of Delectable Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib''), survives. The cookbook was composed in Tunis around 1260. The cookbook was composed of recipes from Al-Tujībī's Al-Andalus heritage, where dishes had Muslim, Christian and Jewish influences. Until 2018 it was thought that there was no complete copy of the book remaining, until an accidental discovery at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

. Bink Hallum (of the British Library) asked for the expertise of the food historian

Nawal Nasrallah Nawal Nasrallah is a U.S.-based Iraqi food writer, food historian, English literature scholar, and translator from Arabic into English. She is best known for her cookbook featuring Iraqi cuisine, entitled ''Delights from the Garden of Eden'', and ...

who realised the significance of the finding. Nasrallah has since translated a copy version of the book into English, which was published in 2021.

See also

References

Further reading